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As Amy Silverstein warned us might happen last week, the Texas Senate has moved forward with banning insurance providers from covering the nearly all abortions sought by Texas women.
See also: Texas Lawmakers Want to Make Insurance More Expensive for Women Getting Abortions
Larry Taylor, a Republican from Friendswood, stressed that his bill was not a ban on elective abortion. Instead, Taylor said, S.B. 575 merely allows Texans who don’t support abortion to opt out of subsidizing them with their insurance premiums.
Following that train of thought blood transfusions, birth control and, hell, Western medicine in general shouldn’t be funded by health insurance, something that Senator Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat from Houston, picked up on.
“What if I don’t believe in vasectomies?,” she asked Tuesday.
“That’s another bill for another day,” Taylor answered.
Kirk Watson from Austin, another Democrat, grilled Taylor as to why his bill didn’t provide exceptions for extreme circumstances, like rape, incest or severe fetal abnormalities. Watson suggested to his collegue that women seeking abortions might have a “slightly different life experience from you.”
Taylor told Watson that women could still choose what to do, but they would have to pay for it.
The bill passed, 21-10.
